Defense blames doppelganger

Share this:

A San Francisco jury began hearing the tangled evidence today in the notorious case of Orlando Ware.

You may remember Ware — he was freed two years ago, thanks to Mayor Gavin Newsom’s push to relieve overcrowding at Juvenile Hall, even though he had a robbery history and had repeatedly violated his probation. Eight days after the then-16 year old was freed May 7, 2007, he allegedly shot 19-year-old Eric Campos to death in a botched drug deal on San Bruno Avenue.

But that fiasco is far from the focus of Ware’s trial in adult court. The question is whether Ware, now 18, or his closest friend and uncharged doppelganger pulled the trigger.

Prosecutor Scot Clark freely admitted to the Superior Court jury this morning in his opening statement that the two young men looked remarkably similar. They also both wore dreadlocks, Ware’s with red tips, the friend’s yellow.

Both often wore black, puffy jackets with diamond pattern stitching. Then it gets even more confusing for authorities. Both jackets, when tested, showed traces from gunfire.

In the friend’s jacket, police found some of the drugs taken when Campos was robbed of his marijuana and ecstasy and shot.

But by that time, police had already focused on Ware. That was because his cell phone was found near where Campos was killed. Records showed that Ware had phoned Campos hours before the killing — authorities believe he was setting up the drug deal that went south.

Ware’s story to police was a bit thin. He first said he did not know Campos, had never been to the scene and did not even know the other man, the one who turned out to be his best friend. Ware explained the cell phone by saying he had left it on a bus that runs through the area.

The doppelganger, Clark said, is a “phantom” whom the defense is pointing to so Ware can beat a murder rap.

Ware’s attorney, Ellen Leonida, said he is wrongly accused and has been “living a nightmare of the criminal justice system” for two years. Ware did lie about not knowing his best friend, she said, but that was the inevitable product of the code of silence on the streets.

Ware, Leonida said, then naively relied on the police to sort it all out and blame the right person. Instead, she said, authorities “blindly persisted in the prosecution of Orlando Ware.”

The issue of who did what may not mean much under the law. That’s because Ware is being charged under the felony murder rule — which means that even if he did not pull the trigger, he could be convicted of murder just for taking part in the robbery.